April 6, 2009

Apology Tour

In a post nearly three years ago, I speculated about how the election of a Democrat to the presidency might be a good thing, in that it would require the Democrats, as a party, to "own" the war against radical Islamist terror, and admit that it is a war worth fighting....to take on the mantle of leadership of the free world in a dangerous time. And besides, I asked then, how long could the worldwide apology tour possibly take? (sorry...but that's my first self-referential link in a while)

We don't know the answer yet, because the tour is ongoing. Power Line's John Hinderaker wonders if it will ever end.

There is apparently no limit to the man's self-regard, as exemplified in remarks like..."I would like to think that with my election, we're starting to see some restoration of America's standing in the world."

Well, we've seen a lot of kneeling, bowing, scraping and begging, but not a whole lot of standing, since Obama left Washington to insult and deride his country abroad. Soeren Kern takes stock of the emerging Obama Doctrine

Obama's diplomatic philosophy, which seems to put the interests of other countries ahead of those of the United States, could be called the "Obama Doctrine". If it is carried out in practice to its logical conclusion, it will have the long-term effect of gradually transferring U.S. geopolitical power and influence to Europeans and other American rivals.

Dr. Sanity goes off...

Behaving like an ass is not a psychiatric disorder, but it is often quite revealing psychologically; and this despicable behavior by the President exposes an incredibly narcissistic, infantile child/man who has failed to resolve any of the major emotional conflicts in his life. He thinks that now that he is POTUS he has been given carte blanche to destructively act out those conflicts on a world stage.

What a power rush he must be having now that he can finally and thoroughly embarrass the absent father about whom he is so conflicted. How fulfilling that he can now show that father the proper way to behave--like an all powerful nanny/mother.

The signature accomplishment of the G-20 meetings, the trumpeted trillion dollar commitment of "new money" for the IMF, is a mirage, according to the Times.

Bret Stephens is calling the trip an Unreality Tour. To wit, Obama's response to the North Korean missile launch...

...the greatest prize for Mr. Kim was the reaction from President Obama. "Rules must be binding," the president told his audience in Prague on Sunday. "Violations must be punished. Words must mean something." But how are words supposed to mean anything if all the administration proposes to do is offer up yet another resolution -- which is to say, more words?

To nobody's surprise (except, perhaps, Mr. Obama's) the Security Council has so far failed to agree on a resolution. But that's the U.N. for you, as opposed to a serious organization like NATO, at whose 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg . . . nothing much was accomplished, either.

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In fairness, not everything about Mr. Obama's trip was unfortunate. At the G-20 Summit in London, the Europeans failed to get the U.S. to sign up to a new global regulatory agency, and the U.S. failed to convince the Europeans to dig themselves even deeper into debt -- a win for both sides, albeit unintentionally.

UPDATE 4/7: James Lewis: Those Arrogant Americans

Posted by dan at April 6, 2009 9:23 PM